2013 Annual Conference

2013 Annual Conference

It's time again for the SNAP Annual Conference! This year our conference will take place in Washington DC at the Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel.

Schedule:

Friday Evening, July 26

7:00 PM Welcome to the Conference! (Ballroom)

Jeff Dion

Marianne Benkert

Christa Brown

David Clohessy

9:30 PM Reception: Ice Cream Social

Saturday, July 27

7:00 AM Morning walk, leisure to brisk pace

9:00 AM Anne Barrett Doyle and Terry McKiernan

Dr. Christian Pfeiffer

Lynne Abraham

11:00-11:15 Break

11:15-12:15 Breakout Session One

12:15-1:45 Lunch

1:45 Pam Spees

Ellie Smeal

Richard Sipe and Tom Doyle

4:15-4:30 Break

4:30-5:30 Breakout Session Two

5:30 Dinner

5:30 Friends of Bill W meeting

8:00 Eclipsed– The Magdalene Laundries

By Patricia Burke Brogan

Sunday, July 28

7:00 AMMorning walk, leisure to brisk pace

9:00Mari Steed

I Made A Difference Awards

International Panel

Chile- Juan Carlos Cruz

Senegal- Badara Ndaw

Australia- Nicky Davis

Peru- Dr. Hector Guillen

Colombia- Fabio Herrara

Canada- Leona Huggins

Ireland- Mari Steed

11:30 Barbara Blaine

NoonConference Ends

Speakers:

Michael D’Antonio

Michael D’Antonio is the author of Mortal Sins, Sex Crime and the Era of Catholic Scandal, which was published in April by Macmillan publishers. Praised as "The definitive history of the Catholic Church's 'most severe crisis since the Reformation" Mortal Sins tells the story of the clerical sexual abuse crisis from its beginning in America in the 1980s through today. Before becoming a fulltime author and freelance writer Michael worked as a reporter and features writer in New England, Washington, D.C., and New York. During his tenure at Newsday on Long Island, he received the Pulitzer Prize, which he shared with a team of reporters there, and won several other awards, including the Alicia Patterson Fellowship He is also recipient of the Humanitas award for screenwriting and his books have been noted as editors picks and in annual “best of” lists by the The Christian Science Monitor, The Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, NPR's Science Friday, and Inc magazine.

Tom Doyle

Tom Doyle is an ordained priest who holds a doctorate in Canon Law and five separate master's degrees. He is also a trained and licensed addictions therapist. Tom served at the Vatican Embassy in the 1980’s where he became directly involved with the clergy sex abuse case of former Fr. Gilbert Gauthe that received national publicity. Tom worked with Ray Mouton and the late Fr. Michael Peterson, M.D., to compose the report on the problem of sexual abuse by clergy that served as the notice to the Vatican and to the U.S. bishops about the grave nature of the sexual abuse by clergy.

He has served as an expert witness and consultant in criminal and civil cases throughout the U.S., in Canada, Ireland, the U.K., Australia, New Zealand, Belgium, the Netherlands and Israel.

Lynne M. Abraham, Esquire

Ms. Abraham is a partner in Archer & Greiner’s Philadelphia Office. Her 18-year tenure as District Attorney is the longest in modern city history. As leader of the largest prosecutor’s office in Pennsylvania and one of the largest in the nation, employing approximately 600 and handling more than 75,000 cases a year, Ms. Abraham forged a reputation as a tough and effective yet compassionate protector of public safety for more than 1.5 million citizens of the City and County of Philadelphia. She was the first prosecutor and only one in the Country at that time to launch a multi-year Grand Jury Investigation into Clergy Sex Abuse, who compelled the Cardinal-Archbishop to testify about clergy abuse, and who also released all the names of priests in the Archdiocese of Philadelphia who abused children.

Dr. Marianne Benkert

Marianne Benkert, M.D. is a psychiatrist who was in private practice for 29 years in Baltimore, MD. She also served as the psychiatric consultant at Loyola College of Baltimore from 1970 to 1987. Dr. Benkert served in leadership positions in the county and state medical associations with a special interest in the professional ethics of physicians. She served as President of the Baltimore County Medical Association in 1993 and was Chair of the Council on Ethical and Judicial Affairs of the Maryland State Medical Society from 1994 to 1998. The American Psychiatric Association elected her to be a Distinguished Life Fellow in recognition of significant contributions to Psychiatry.

After moving to San Diego she was appointed assistant professor in psychiatry and medicine at the University of California, San Diego, a position she held for 5 years. There she continued to see patients and supervise psychiatric residents. Dr. Benkert has treated numerous victims of trauma and abuse including victims of religious and clerical sexual abuse. She has served as an expert witness in legal cases involving sexual abuse by religious figures and continues to do research on this topic.

Dr. Christian Pfeiffer

Christian Pfeiffer, Prof. Dr. jur., born 1944, studied Law and Social Psychology in Munich and London. In 1987 he became Professor of criminology, Juvenile criminal law and correction at the University of Hanover and director of the Criminological Research Institute of Lower Saxony (KFN). From 2000 to 2003 he was Minister of Justice in Lower Saxony. Since March 2003 he is back in his former position at the KFN.

Barbara Blaine

Barbara is founder and president of SNAP, Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests. Since 1988, Blaine has reached out to help survivors, expose wrongdoers and prevent clergy sex crimes and cover ups. Previously Blaine worked as a volunteer high school teacher in Jamaica and assisted street-children to locate family members, ran a shelter for homeless families in Chicago and then represented abused and neglected children in juvenile court. Blaine holds graduate degrees in Law, Social Work and Theology. Blaine works tirelessly to protect the innocence and safety of children and to help survivors and their loved-ones find healing, information and support, and to seek accountability from those responsible.

Pam Spees

Pam Spees is a senior staff attorney in the international human rights program at the Center for Constitutional Rights. She has a background in international criminal and human rights law with a gender focus, as well as criminal trial practice. She serves as lead counsel in the legal effort to hold Vatican officials criminally responsible for the crimes against humanity of rape and sexual violence within the church. Prior to joining CCR, she served as Program Director of the Women's Caucus for Gender Justice, an international advocacy network dedicated to ensuring accountability for crimes of sexual and gender violence included in the treaty establishing the International Criminal Court. She now serves as an advisor to the Women's Initiatives for Gender Justice (formerly the Women's Caucus), which is now based in The Hague, to monitor the Court and continue the advocacy for accountability for gender-based violence. She also serves on the board of MADRE, a 30-year-old organization that works to advance womens human rights by meeting urgent needs in communities and building lasting solutions to the crises women face.

Christa Brown

Christa is the author of This Little Light: Beyond a Baptist Preacher Predator and His Gang, a combination memoir and exposé about clergy sex abuse and cover-ups in the largest Protestant denomination, the Southern Baptist Convention. As one of the first to go public with substantiated molestation allegations against a Southern Baptist minister and documentation that others knew, Christa survived every attempt of the Baptist machine to shut her down, and she was the first survivor to address the SBC’s Executive Committee at the “Baptist Vatican” in Nashville. After a twenty-five year career as an appellate attorney, Christa now teaches yoga for cancer survivors, and she volunteers as a hospital ethics consultant. Christa blogs at StopBaptistPredators.

Jeff Dion

Jeff Dion has championed crime victims' rights for more than two decades. Jeff began advocating for victims in 1982, when his twenty-three year old sister, Paulette, was murdered by a serial killer. In 1998, Jeff joined the staff of the National Center for Victims of Crime, where he currently serves as both Deputy Executive Director and the Director of the National Crime Victim Bar Association. In that capacity, he lectures throughout the country to foster greater communication and understanding among crime victims and attorneys. Jeff, who is also a survivor of childhood sexual abuse, serves on the Board of Directors of ACTS, the social service organization that serves victims of sexual assault and domestic violence in Prince William County, VA.

David Clohessy

For the last 23 years, David has served as the director of SNAP. In that role, he has traveled and spoken extensively, helping to set up local support groups in more than 50 cities. Clohessy was one of only four survivors to address all of America’s catholic bishops at their historic meeting in Dallas in 2002. Before working full-time with SNAP, David was a community organizer in low income neighborhoods, a union organizer representing low wage workers, and has been a political and public relations consultant. David helped elect St. Louis’ first black mayor and later the city’s first female prosecutor. David is committed to exposing hidden truths and cover-us in the church, especially who knew what, and when. He is married and has two sons.

Mari T. Steed

The daughter of a Magdalene survivor, Steed was adopted to the United States from Ireland, and is mother to a daughter also relinquished to adoption in the U.S. She has since been reunited with her mother, daughter, and extended family. Mari has worked in adoption activism for nearly twenty years, collaborating with rights groups such as Adoption Ireland, as well as Bastard Nation and Adopted Citizens of Eire (ACE) in the US. She provided testimony to the United States ratification of the Hague Convention on Intercountry Adoption, and co-founded Justice for Magdalenes in 2003. Mari is currently the Director of Technology and New Media at the World Affairs Council of Philadelphia.

Anne Barrett Doyle

Anne is co-director of BishopAccountability.org. In 2002, she co-founded Coalition of Catholics and Survivors, a group that organized activism in the Boston archdiocese. Previously, she was an editor, mediator, and vice president of a Manhattan public relations firm. She is a graduate of Harvard College.

Terry McKiernan

Terry founded BishopAccountability.org in 2003 and is the organization’s president. Terry holds master’s degrees in Classics from the University of Wisconsin–Madison and the University of Bristol in England. Before his involvement in the church crisis, he was an academic editor and a consulting firm manager.

Richard Sipe

A.W. Richard Sipe is a Certified Clinical Mental Health Counselor who earlier spent 18 years as a Benedictine monk and priest. He was trained specifically to deal with the mental health problems of Roman Catholic Priests. In the process of training and therapy, he conducted a 25-year ethnography study of the celibate/sexual behavior of that population. His study, published in 1990, is now considered a classic. Sipe is known internationally and has participated in 12 documentaries on celibacy and priest sexual abuse aired by many major networks and print publications. Sipe lives with his wife in La Jolla, CA.

Juan Carlos Cruz

In 2009, together with James Hamilton and José Andrés Murillo, Juan Carlos came forward with his story of abuse by Fr. Fernando Karadima, an emblematic priest in Chilean society. Born in Santiago, Chile, Juan Carlos studied journalism and worked in several newsrooms before moving to the United States in 2000, where he has worked for several Fortune 500 companies as their corporate communications executive. In April 2010, Cruz’s story broke in the New York Times, forever changing the dominance and cover-up of abuse in the Chilean Catholic Church. Because of his courage, other victims have felt empowered to come forward. Two best-selling books have been written about this case, and a movie is currently in the works.

Badara Ndaw

Badara Ndaw is a Human Rights advocate from Senegal, West Africa. As a Renewable Energy practitioner, he aims at providing energy solutions to African villages through a Rural Electrification Program. Working with SNAP Network since 2010 Badara has now been appointed as the Africa Regional Coordinator of the organization. Through SNAP educational material and frequent virtual self help support group sessions, he is striving to bring more disclosures, accountability and reparations from pedophile priests. However, the feelings of embarrassment and the fear of being exposed prevent victims of sex abuse from seeking justice. The subject of clergy sex abuse is still considered very much ‘taboo’ in Africa; not to mention the inferiority complex of most people towards the Church. Those powerful factors are currently preventing Human and Children’s Rights advocates from exposing the unlawful behaviors of the priests. With the support of SNAP, Badara is fighting to protect the confidentiality of the victims and bring the clergy perpetrators to justice.

Nicky Davis

Nicky Davis first came forward about her abuse after the appalling treatment of Australian survivors during World Youth Day 2008 in Sydney. Refusing to enter Cardinal George Pell's abusive Towards Healing process, Nicky went straight to the police. Her carefully hidden perpetrator was finally arrested after a decade long coverup. But the broken Australian justice system allowed him to walk free, despite multiple eyewitnesses to the dozens of assaults against her. Determined not to see others denied justice as she was, Nicky became a SNAP Australia leader and lobbied for the Royal Commission announced by the Australian Prime Minister, Julia Gillard, in November 2012. Nicky is working closely with the Royal Commission and other current inquiries in Australia to ensure these rare attempts to deliver justice and healing to survivors are not derailed by vested interests.

Amy Smith

Amy is the Houston SNAP leader. She strives to shine the light of truth on child sexual abuse and cover up of abuse within Baptist churches, as well as other churches and institutions where the vulnerable are harmed. She personally knows survivors of abuse by ministers at her former church, a Dallas area Baptist mega-church, where this abuse has been covered up for decades. Amy hopes to continue to shatter the silence.

Becky Ianni

Becky has been a member of SNAP since 2006 and a SNAP leader in the Washington D.C. area since 2007. Becky is a peer leader who first courageously faced her own abuse and fought church leaders for justice, and then began taking calls from other survivors and walking with them along a healing journey. She is a SNAP spokesperson who seeks to expose truth. She holds a BA in Education from the College of William and Mary.

Brenda Brunelle

Brenda Brunelle is the SNAP Leader from Windsor, Ontario, Canada. She is a retired Immigration Officer and mother of two children and two step children. She is a survivor who was abused by her parish priest for a year starting at age 12, while in the eighth grade.

Born and raised in Windsor ON Canada she continues to live there with her husband Don Brunelle. She graduated from college with her business degree after her youngest child was enrolled in full time elementary school. Spending time with family and friends are the highlights of Brenda's week, especially Sunday dinners.

Brenda is an advocate for justice and often speaks out for those who are not yet comfortable to do so. She started a SNAP support group meeting in 2012 and it continues to grow. She inspires others with her ability to speak the truth.

Dottie Klammer

Dottie Klammer is a SNAP leader from Richmond, VA. After 38 years as a critical care nurse, she currently spends half of her work time co-managing a mini storage facility with her husband and the other half trading the stock market. She keeps her fingers in the healing arena by doing healing touch and she says she feels as much a healer doing that as when she cared for critically ill patients. A cradle Catholic who embraced the church until mid life, she found that her spiritual path led to the Unity Church where today, she serves as a prayer chaplain. She loves spending time with her three grand children and her 97 year old mother. The thing that makes her heart sing she says, is when someone comes to their very first SNAP meeting because she knows first hand how much courage it takes to walk through the door that first time.

Dr. Michael Smith

Dr. Michael Smith is the Founder and chairperson of the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association, a not-for-profit training and advocacy organization that encourages community wellness through the use of acupuncture for those suffering from behavioral health issues, including addictions, mental health, and emotional trauma. Michael coordinated 1,000 acupuncture treatments during the first 2 weeks after the event for 9-11 survivors at St. Vincent’s Hospital. He is a participant and coordinator of acupuncture PTSD in many parts of the world. Michael was first member of the Drug Court Hall of Fame 1995 and a recipient of the Rudin Award by NYC Mayor Dinkins in 1990.

Dr. Hector Guillen

Hector is an ophthalmologist, Peruvian freethinker, activist, and promoter of international networks of those affected by coercive persuasion from sectarian groups. He is also an advocate of a secular state that takes effective church-state separation in Peru and Latin America, and is a researcher of clerical sexual abuse and promoter of agencies and legislation that protects people and victims from religious sexual abuse in Peru.

Jo Ann Lenney

Jo Ann Lenney is an acupuncture detoxification specialist (ADS) and a registered trainer (RT) for the National Acupuncture Detoxification Association (NADA). She had worked as a volunteer at Lincoln Recovery Center from 1997 until its close in December 2011. She has also volunteered in New York post-9/11 with students, teachers and firefighters, and in New Orleans post-Katrina.

Joelle Casteix

A CSA survivor, former journalist, educator, and public relations professional, Joelle Casteix is now a leading national spokesperson, writer and advocate for victims of child sexual abuse. As the Western Regional Director for SNAP, the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests, Joelle has been interviewed by the major national and international television networks, local and national radio, and the 24-hour news stations. She has been the principal spokesperson in more than 100 regional and national press conferences, fielding questions from local, national and international media on the issues and news affecting victims of childhood sexual abuse. She has also appeared in several documentaries and has served as a consultant on a number of feature film projects. As a writer, her work has appeared in newspapers, national mainstream and trade magazines, websites, blogs, newsletters and collateral materials. Joelle has also worked and/or partnered with organizations including the National Center for Victims of Crime; RAINN – The Rape and Incest National Network; the Institute of Violence, Abuse and Trauma; Cal State Fullerton and other colleges, universities, crisis centers, and national victims rights and support organizations. In addition to her advocacy, Joelle has dedicated a great portion of her career to changing criminal and civil legislation and statutes of limitation for child sexual abuse. She has testified in front of numerous state legislatures, addressing lawmakers’ questions on pending legislation designed to make laws more victim- and child-friendly. She also conducts trainings for families, churches and communities on how to raise empowered children and keep our communities safe from child sexual abuse. In addition to her work for victims, she is dedicated to the arts, sitting on the boards of directors for the Orange County Women’s Chorus and the Follman/Young Foundation for the Arts. A classically trained operatic soprano, Joelle is a graduate of the University of California at Santa Barbara and completed graduate work at the University of Colorado, Denver.

Judy Lorenz

Judy Lorenz is originally from Moonachie, NJ . She moved to College Park to the University of Maryland. There she met David Lorenz and they were married in 1982. She has four children and two beautiful granddaughters. Judy made the switch from teaching children to working with elder folks in 2007 when she became a Program Assistant for the Bowie Senior Center. In 2011 Judy became president of CITI Ministries, Inc. a lay organization calling married priests back into ministry. In 2002 Judy, with her husband Dave, (a survivor of clergy abuse) became active in SNAP in the aftermath of the Boston clergy sex abuse scandal. Judy is also involved in Voice of the Faithful, MD, CTA and she is founder of the Emmaus Community of Bowie, an Intentional Eucharistic Community.

David Lorenz

David Lorenz was born and raised in Northern Kentucky and currently lives in Bowie, Maryland with his wife, Judy, of 31 years. He is the SNAP Maryland director and moderates a monthly support group. Judy is also involved in SNAP and provides support to friends and relatives of survivors. Dave's passion lies in reaching out to those people that have been keeping the shame and guilt of abuse bottled up inside them for years - just as he did. Dave was raised in a deeply religious Catholic household and is one of ten children. He is tired of the lying and maneuvering of the Catholic hierarchy that protects their assets while re-victimizing survivors who come forward looking for help. He believes that very little has changed to make the Church safer for children.

Dave and Judy have four children of their own along with two grandchildren. “While I was too afraid to do anything about this issue when my own kids were little, I am determined to make it safer for my grandchildren.”

Judy Miller

Judy Miller has been a supporter and advocate of sexual abuse survivors since 2003 and a SNAP leader for Delaware since 2007 where she facilitates a monthly support group. She has listened to countless survivor stories as a SNAP Helpline volunteer and feels privileged to walk with survivors on their healing journeys. The mother of two and grandmother of five, Judy is a retired gerontologist.

Leona Huggins

Leona is the SNAP leader for British Columbia. She has worked with survivors, attended trials and helped to create an environment that will encourage not only those that have been harmed but also witnesses and whistleblowers to come forward. Her concern and dedication to helping survivors from the First Nations has served western Canada well. Leona’s life’s work has been with children. She works in education as a consultant for school districts.

Linda Cortes

Linda Y. Cortes, LMFT, is a licensed marriage and family therapist with nearly a decade of experience providing mental health services in community health centers, private practice, and large HMO settings. A double graduate of California State University-Long Beach, Linda has both a Bachelor of Arts in Psychology and a Master’s of Science in Counseling. She is licensed to practice in the states of Virginia and California. Currently, she is establishing a clinical private practice in Alexandria, and provides therapy services to children, adults and families, including victims of abuse. Linda was born and raised in Southern California and moved to Virginia in 2011. Linda now resides in the city of Alexandria with her husband and daughter.

Lisa Kendzior

Lisa Kendzior is the Dallas/Ft. Worth SNAP Leader. She is also the mother of a survivor of military sexual assault, when her daughter was a midshipman at the U.S. Naval Academy. Their family’s experience with the U.S. Military is not unlike the plight of the clergy abuse survivor to the Catholic church. An institution that they supported and embraced, left them seeking justice and change through the federal courts through the bravery of her daughter, Annie.

Mary Caplan

Mary is a survivor of clergy sex abuse and is the New York City SNAP leader, where she facilitates monthly support group meetings. She was a nurse for 15 years before making the decision to return to graduate school, and attended Fordham University for a degree in Counseling Psychology. Mary has a private practice where she counsels people with life-threatening illnesses, as well as individuals going through periods of grief. Mary has been an active member of SNAP since 2005.

David Ouellete

David has worked in the field of developmental disabilities for 27 years starting as a Direct Support Professional and later working in the field of health facility licensing and quality assurance. He is currently working for the NH Council on Developmental Disabilities as the Director of Projects. Current projects include statewide leadership around bullying prevention, state and national leader around inclusive Emergency Preparedness Planning for people with functional limitations, co-editor and creator of “Stepping Stones NH,” a resource guide for children and adults living with disabilities, and advisor to People First of NH, a statewide Self Advocacy group. David is an adjunct professor of counseling at a local college. He lives in Rochester, NH with his wife Robin, two children Sam and Tess and has supported two adults with developmental disabilities in their home for the past 23 years.

Mary Ellen Kruger

Mary Ellen lives in St. Louis, MO with 4 children and 7 grandchildren and 1 great-granddaughter. She worked in Insurance for 33 yrs. before retiring in 2009. Her youngest son, Stephen Hippe, was abused by a priest and a teacher in 1985 and 86 while in a Catholic High School. Both were prosecuted and sent to prison. Stephen took his own life in 1991 at the age of 21. Mary Ellen is an active member of SNAP, VOTF, Sts. Clare & Francis ECC and Friends of Fr. Dickson Cemetery. She has done research on treatment centers in the St. Louis area, where the church is housing and servicing clergy accused of sexual offenses.

Megan Peterson

Megan Peterson is a survivor from Minnesota. In 2005, at the age of fifteen, she came forward to tell her story of abuse by a priest. The priest fled the country to his native India and was shielded by his native diocese. Since then Megan has pressed forward by civilly suing the diocese of Crookston to hold them accountable and by forcing protective measures to be put in place. She has also pressed forward with a criminal case against the priest, currently seeking extradition. Recently it was decided that he would be extradited back to the US to face charges. She was also involved in the filing at the ICC and has spent the past couple of years speaking across the globe, raising awareness, giving support, and fighting for accountability. Megan currently lives in New York City where she is pursuing a degree in Art Therapy.

Melanie Sakoda

In June of 1999 Melanie Sakoda and two friends, Cappy and Greta Larson, founded a website, Pokrov.org, to reach out to survivors of abuse in the Orthodox Christian churches. The three women had spoken up about the way an abuse case in their local parish was mishandled by church officials, and their lives were forever changed by the resulting backlash. Melanie and the two Larsons realized how lucky they were to have had each other during this time, and they wanted to reach out to others who were going through similar experiences without support. SNAP was always a valuable resource to the website, and in 2008 it affiliated with the larger group. Melanie has been a SNAP leader in the San Francisco Bay area since 2009.

Fabio Herrera

At age 19, Fabio Herrera immigrated to the United States from Colombia in search of new hope and opportunities. With only four years of elementary school and a lack of the English language skills, Fabio overcame obstacles and was able to obtain his High School diploma and eventually earned his Bachelor’s degree, an MBA and doctoral (PhD) degree in international business. While a young boy in Colombia, two priests took Fabio’s innocence. He was only seven years old when he was sexually abused, and even today he does not forget the two priests with morbid smiles on their faces. As a result of that horrible experience, Fabio wrote the book “Over and Over Again,” which was translated into Spanish and published in Mexico under the title "Cuando el Abuso se Vuelve Adicción,” not only as a way of capturing his life as such but as a teaching of overcoming. The book was made into a movie that is available on the Snag Films Web site. Mr. Herrera, is a member of the Survivors Network of those Abused by Priests (SNAP) and is trying to build a SNAP group in Colombia.

Ellie Smeal

Ellie Smeal is the current president of the Feminist Majority Foundation (FMF) and a former President of the Nationa Organization for Women (NOW). Smeal's career in feminist rights has earned her a spot on Time Magazine's "50 Face for America's Future" in 1979 and in 1983 "The World Almanac" rated her as the fourth most influential woman in the US. Living up to those predictions, Smeal has lead the FMF to successfully fight against sexual and domestic violence, increase convictions and sentence for rapists, assisted in getting more women elected to congress from both parties, championed campaigns to increase human rights in the US and acrros the globe. Smeal has supported survivors in helping to expose truth, hold predators and enablers accountable and assited SNAP leadership in best practices for non-for profit organizations and fundraising for over a decade.

Kathleen Shaw

Since 2002, Kathy has operated the Clergy Abuse Tracker, a daily blog of news reports worldwide about sexual abuse within religious institutions. BishopAccountability.org has hosted the Abuse Tracker since 2006. A journalist for more than 40 years, Kathy started writing stories about clergy sexual abuse for the Worcester MA Telegram & Gazette in the early 1990s. She searched in the woods of Canada to find one priest who had fled arrest for abusing youngsters at the youth home he operated. Her reporting was instrumental in getting him extradited back to the U.S., where he stood trial. A graduate of Becker College and Assumption College, Worcester, MA, Kathy also worked 11 years as a mental health crisis clinician and counselor.

Sheila Murphy

Sheila Murphy was a Presiding Judge of Cook County and was a pioneer in promoting social justice in the court system. Murphy established Cook County’s first drug court, improved processes in domestic violence court and opened the first children's room in a court house to keep children from witnessing proceedings against their parents. She has tirelessly advocated for restorative justice programs. She is currently teaching at the John Marshall Law School in Chicago.

Dave O'Regan

David O’Regan was sexually abused at age 11 by a priest who was the director of a Catholic Summer camp in

Massachusetts. The abuse continued until he was 15 years old. He never spoke of the abuse or consciously thought about it until his memory was triggered in 2002 by the media coverage of the “Boston Clergy Sex Abuse Crisis,” the diocese of his abuse. After 41 years of silence the pain of keeping his secrete in was greater than letting it out. At the age of 52 and being married for thirty years he told his wife for the first time. That began a long period of dealing with and healing from the crippling effects the abuse caused. David attended his first SNAP meeting in 2004 and instantly found that the SNAP organization gave him an outlet where he felt trust and could speak of his abuse and be understood. In 2011 David became the Central Massachusetts Director for SNAP holding monthly support group meetings in Worcester Ma.

David is married to his wife Jane and together they have raised six children and have been foster parents to over fifty children over the years. He retired from the United States Postal Service after 35 years and presently is a College Public Safety Officer. David is also a volunteer for the Enough Abuse Campaign and gives talks to young people, parents, and professionals on the dangers of sexual abuse.

Suzy Nauman

In May 2006, Suzy joined BishopAccountability.org, where she heads the organization’s effort to research and publish assignment records for all accused priests. From 2002 to 2006, she helped organize affiliates across the US for Voice of the Faithful. A social worker, Suzy directed a group treatment program for sexually abused children in Kentucky from 1990 to 1994. She has a Bachelor’s degree in Education from the University of Dayton and a Master’s degree in Social Work from San Francisco State University.

Trish McLelland

Trish McLelland is the coordinator of BishopAccountability.org’s accused priest database, which now includes more than 3,800 names. For ten years, as legal assistant to Dallas plaintiff attorney Sylvia Demarest, Trish helped create an extensive electronic database and file collection on accused priests. After Sylvia retired and donated this archive to BishopAccountability.org, Trish joined the BA.org staff part-time. She has a Master’s degree in Library Science.

Hotel Reservation

To make a hotel reservation call the hotel at, 703-413-1300, and be sure to say you are with the SNAP group. You can also book a room by clicking here, again be sure to say you are with the SNAP group.

Renaissance Arlington Capital View Hotel

2800 S Potomac Ave, Arlington, VA

703-413-1300

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